Yahoo to adopt AdSense?

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Yahoo may be on the verge of signing an ad deal with Google. There's a mention of it at ZDNet. That article apparently mentions that "this Yahoo-Google tie-up could create a real-time auction system that could allow Microsoft to connect." Not sure what "to connect" means, but I assume it means Microsoft could participate in the ad deal to ease anti-trust concerns.

The best comment on the deal comes from fr0thy2, who says of the connection aspect: "That'd be great. Especially if they keep changing the protocols further down the road so that MS machines don't work properly."

After all, since Microsoft is accusing Google of being the new, monopolistic Evil Empire, whom better to take lessons from than Microsoft?

I've said for years that it was dumb for Yahoo not to use AdSense, because AdSense works and Yahoo's ad system does not -- although they could fix that if they would just follow Google's lead and make sure the ads are RELEVANT with no flash or pop-ups. But Yahoo just can't resist giving into the demands of advertisers, even though it's painfully obvious that those demands simply don't work.

Here's another one. Yahoo is a portal. Google is a search engine. Yahoo should also drop its own search engine and use Google's again. Once Yahoo decided Google was a competitor, it dropped Google Search, the best general search engine on the market, in order to offer its own, inferior engine. That's a really smart way to serve your customers: Remove a product that works for an inferior one out of fear and spite.

The way for Jerry Yang to turn Yahoo around is to adopt the best-of-breed applications wherever possible and then to work on distinguishing the portal in other ways. That includes offering the best content it can find, rather than the stuff that content providers can be convinced to pay Yahoo for the privilege of posting on Yahoo.

A case in point. I write for an investment site called smallcapinvestor.com. Very early on, Google Finance started posting links to the articles we write, because they rose to the top. Yahoo did not, until smallcapinvestor worked out a deal to pay Yahoo to carry them. Very occasionally, my articles do not rise high enough for Google to capture it, and Google does not provide the link. But now everything we write appears on Yahoo Finance.

Yahoo needs to get it through their skulls that picking content based on financial deals instead of quality actually hurts the site, and its revenues, in the long run. Google is unbiased and tries for the best. And it has all but killed Yahoo because of it.

This is the internet. Get with the program, Yang.

Comments

[zowoco]

How often we hear of these big three nowadays considering this deal or that deal, but I suspect in reality it is all just a fix to propel themselves into the news on any pretext in order to retain their image as the leaders of the pack. Heaven forbid any other internet company stealing their thunder!

How about ebay and amazon joining forces to provide email, search engine, mapping, video and software! Let's see some competition to the monopoly!